PAC strikes fear within incumbents

A super PAC funded by a handful of Texas conservatives and a shadowy corporation is wreaking havoc in primaries across the country.

Up next: The Campaign for Primary Accountability is hoping to rack up two more victories on Tuesday by ousting incumbent Illinois Reps. Donald Manzullo, a Republican, and Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat.

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The stated mission of the Houston-based super PAC is simple: to oust congressional incumbents on both sides of the aisle.

“We step in as equalizers so that there can actually be a competitive election, so that — God forbid — members of Congress have to face the voters in a competitive environment,” said super PAC spokesman Curtis Ellis.

But while the group claims to be nonpartisan and transparent about its cash flow, its biggest donors have a history of backing establishment Republican causes. And one of the Houston corporations backing the group appears to have gone defunct in the 1980s.

The Houston-based super PAC has already spent more than $1 million running ads in Illinois and across the country, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. On Monday, the super PAC reported spending $94,000 in last-minute ads attacking Manzullo and Jackson in the run-up to Tuesday’s primaries.

The group’s spending is relatively small, but the impact it has had in primaries across the country is the kind of thing good government types have feared would become the norm in the era of super PACs: A small group of wealthy donors gets an outsize role in an election.

The super PAC’s tactics have infuriated the lawmakers they’re targeting and even The New York Times editorial board, which questioned the motives of the group’s wealthy donors on Sunday.

“Why would we have a system that allows people from outside the state with absolutely no connections to literally buy an election?” Manzullo said Monday in an interview.

In the Illinois primary, Jackson is expected to easily deflect the challenge from former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, but Manzullo is locked in a tight race with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, and the super PAC’s ads could help tilt the scales.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability raked in $1.8 million by the end of January, according to its most recent campaign finance report. Much of that — about $775,000 — came from the group’s founder, Leo Linbeck III, a wealthy construction tycoon based in Houston. Linbeck has supported GOP causes in the past: In 2009, he donated $1,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

One of the group’s corporate donors, the Houston-based W Corp., doesn’t appear to be active in Texas. The only corporation with that name had its charter forfeited in the 1980s, according to a search by the Texas secretary of state’s office.

The company gave $20,000 to the PAC.

Ellis declined to offer more specifics on the corporate donor, saying “We received a check from the W Corp., we deposited the check from the W Corp. We filed a report with the [Federal Election Commission] as required by law, disclosed everything we’re required to disclose.”